Dave's Insufferable Euro-Blog

Why you no post, Dave Heckman, why you no poooost?

2008-04-22T12:42:00.000-07:00

Well, a lot of reasons.

The last month has been kind of busy for me and unfortunately, I can't blog about being in college if I flunk out of college. Also, sometimes I just sort of stop feeling like writing something, and just plum don't write it for long periods of time. I'm trying to get better at this, but it's hard.

Well, the rest of my German-Speaking Switzerland trip is pretty boring anyway. We stayed in Zurich and I visited James Joyce's grave. When I told my parents about this, my dad commented that there are probably droves of confused tourists in Dublin trying to find his grave, but just not looking in the right country.

So what will I be talking about next? We'll see.

The Swiss Saga, Day 5: Blew a Glass Darkly

2008-03-22T21:33:00.000-07:00

It was kind of a slow day today. We went to a glass factory in the town of Hergiswil, a 15-minute train ride away from Luzern. Before we could get to the wicked-cool molten glass and stuff, we walked through a goofy little interactive tour of the history of glass. Apparently, glass is very old and cultural. Also something about World War I. Anyhoo, the main show was the setup in which we could watch honest, hardworking craftsmen, like zoo animals, doing their jobs. We walked around on a balcony overlooking the factory floor, and there were a few other collections of glass art and things. The cool part was getting to blow my own glass...sphere...thing. I really don't know what the purpose of it is, but it looks dandy sitting on my shelf.

But why strain yourself with these letter-congeries when I can give you a thousand of them at a time?

This is what the glassworks looks like. Apparently this isn't the most cutting-edge setup available, mostly because it has actual humans doing the work, but it has historical cachet.

Apparently, I can use the word "cachet" without the slightest guilt.

This, of all the pictures I've taken on the trip, is the one that most resembles a heavy-metal album cover. Which, really, isn't saying all that much.

Here I am preparing to blow my own glass sphere object, a picture in which I could not look less interested in the prospect and may actually be asleep. My explanation is that as a tall person I have to be looking down at people all the time, hence my eyes are forever downcast. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!

If they could, I'm sure the 19th-century Germans would have drunk all their liqueurs out of a dog's backside.

The Swiss Saga, Day 4: Rock, Paper, Rivers

2008-03-21T07:59:00.000-07:00

Went to Basel (Motto: “Not the Freaking Spice, You Stupid Bastards”), and went on an extremely long and boring walking tour. However, I did learn that the town of Basel is the origin of the legend of the basilisk, even though, uh, the Wikipedia entry says its from Greek words. Well, c'mon, the Greeks have plenty of stuff to their credit, let's let this small Swiss village have a thing or two. Fortunately no one was turned to stone today. Then we went to a paper mill, and saw how the keys of a printing press are made (answer: wicked-awesome liquid metal). In the gift shop, I bought a signet thingy and some sealing wax. Oh, and for the record, pigs DON’T have wings. There. I just saved you the time. Walking back to take the bus back to Luzern, I walked along the side of the Rhine. It's...big.

And now, pictures! Pictures for looking!

A goofy fountain near the beginning of our tour. It would have maybe been more interesting if all the fountain parts weren't frozen solid. Seriously, look at 'em. That ought to tell you something about my receptiveness to a two-hour walking tour outdoors.

A basilisk appears! Fight/Magic/Item/Run?

Bernoulli is buried in Basel. So you better be on your best behavior, boys and babes. Fun fact: I was the only person on the tour who cared at all about Bernoulli or his grave. Ironically, everyone on the trip had flown on a fixed-wing airplane just to be in Switzerland in the first place. No respect, I tells ya.

SERIOUS BUSINESS

This is the inside of a paper mill, and not, as you may suspect, the inside of a giant piano. The six hammers are driven by a mill wheel, and are pounding a slurry of pulp into, uh, even pulpier pulp. They made an endless rhythmic "KLONK...KLONK-KLONK...KLONK...KLA-KLONK KLONK" sound that was either relaxing or madness-inducing depending on the subject.

Interlude: Planeswalker Kirbys

2008-03-18T14:19:00.000-07:00

When you are sitting around in a hotel room without Internet access, but with Photoshop access, you kind of go crazy. This is the result.

(click to enlarge!)

This is my interpretation of five Kirbys who have swallowed the five Magic: the Gathering Planeswalkers from Lorwyn. If you or anyone you know fully understands this, congratulations, you or they are a nerd.

Ahh, boredom!

The Swiss Saga, Day 3: A Clockwork Brown, Or: Relatively Interesting

2008-03-18T13:49:00.000-07:00

We took the train to the city of Bern (Motto: “Berninating the countryside!”). Went on a walking tour, saw a Gothic cathedral, a view of the river, and a clock tower. Inside the clock tower, we saw the huge complicated mechanism that turns the clock, and watched it ring 12 noon. So you know, medieval clockwork consists of a fascinating series of metal gears and joints and flywheels, every last one of which could totally kill you or at least take off a couple fingers.

Afterwards, visited the apartment that Einstein lived in when he was working on the theory of relativity. It...well, it looked like a 20th-century apartment. We watched a little video on the life of Einstein, but it was really just one of those "go there so you can say you've been there" kind of things.

Finally, we took a trolley to the Paul Klee Center to have lunch. I didn't feel like eating any of the pretentious, expensive art gallery food they served, so I went and checked out the gallery before leaving to grab some food elsewhere. The art gallery was on the theme of weird bio-genesis-microcosm-squiggily-artsy-dealies. The captions and musings were in French and German. I can read (if not speak) French pretty well, but I got a headache trying to read a bunch of artistic nonsense like “la recherché artistique est reconstitutee par l’excellence de la tranche de fromage attaché aux pieds pendant qu’on se trouve la biogenisisme,” in the most artistically nonsensical language of them all. I was given money for lunch and dinner, and ended up eating cold bread and salami sandwiches for both. However, this method cost me only 20 of my 60 CHF for the two meals, so I’m gradually accumulating souvenir money, which I could say with a straight face until approximately six hours later, when I had blown it all on booze. Well, I don’t know about you, but I must have been traveling at nearly the speed of light, because it seems like the day just flew by! (Little astrophysics humor for ya. You can keep that one, it’s free.)

Note: What follows is a real-time account of the evening's debauchery, written at approximately 3:00 AM of the night it describes. It appears unaltered from the original transcript. The following contains graphic youthful stupidity. Viewer discretion is...well, since you've read this far, viewer discretion is obviously nonexistent to begin with. Enjoy!

In the evening, drank truly insane amount of vodka and went out clubbing until 2:00 AM. Not feeling so good. OooOooooggghhh. Some fun, but didn’t score with any of the chicks (I.E. totally rejected). Had to borrow clothes in order to be fashionable (who knew I needed to bring a button-down shirt on travel in order to be admitted to a club?) Blew nearly all my spending money. Oh well, you’re only young once. Drank half (or so) a bottle of Smirnoff lime vodka, went to a French restaurant at 10:00 PM and drank a screwdriver, went to a British pub and drank a “Archer’s and lemonade”, went to a club and drank one and a half more screwdrivers. One girl was a really weird drunk who wouldn’t listen to anyone when she was drunk. She wandered off and I hope she found her way home. Remember to ask her tomorrow if she got home okay, assuming she’s alive. I knew I should have gone with her. Now I’m worried that she froze to death trying to get back to the hotel and her death will hang over me like a pall for the rest of my days. Wow, I’m incredibly coherent when I’m drunk and it’s 3 AM. Death before grammar errors!

We apologize for the previous. But the truth had to be told.

And for some more truth, check these fantast-pics!

A carving of the Last Judgment over the door to a church in Bern.

The clock tower on the outside...

...and on the inside.

I went there! See?

Interlude: The Word of the LOLrd

2008-03-17T16:00:00.000-07:00

On my trip, we learned a bit about the Protestant Reformation and its impact on Switzerland. We learned about how Martin Luther translated the Bible into German so that the common people could read it. That is now irrelevant.

This is what Martin Luther wishes he had been cool enough to do.

The Swiss Saga, Day 2: Snow's Your Old Man!

2008-03-17T11:47:00.000-07:00

More of my adventures in my journey from Switaly (Italian-speaking Switzerland) to, uh, Swermany. I would have preferred Swance, but you know what they say, that's just the way the swookie crumbles.

It snowed all night and into the morning, an naturally I discovered at that point that not only had I not brought snow boots, my regular shoes had contracted shoe leprosy and were falling apart. And of course, up next was a walking tour of Lucern. (The phrases you will be hearing most frequently in this travelogue are "walking tour," "took the train," and "for the love of Christ, can't you go five minutes without a cigarette?")

In spite of the snow, it was lovely, and I saw a bunch of 700-year-old houses and bridges, or in some cases, recreations of those things since the originals had burned down repeatedly. We went inside a Rococco church that looks like it was decorated with pink frosting, and I believe I genuinely found religion therein, because only a just and benevolent God could have made the church so warm and comfy. Actually, I think it was just hypothermia setting in.

Ate at same restaurant as the day before for lunch, had a meat pastry thing and raspberry sorbet for dessert. It was not quite as excessive as the previous day's fare, but it was still at three-course lunch, so make of that what you will. We took the train to a town called Einsedeln, and the hypothermia process was only exacerbated as we went north to even colder climes. In Einsdeln, we toured a monastery founded in the 9th century by a monk apparently named Meintraat or Mynd Rädt or Mind Rot or something, who went on to become the patron saint of video games (or possibly death metal). We went to the cathedral and then to the library, which has 200,000 books dating back to the 10th century. They included Bibles, journals of history, Malleus Maleficarum, De praestigiis daemonum, and of course, the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. After surreptitiously snapping pictures of a few vital pages of the Necronomicon, we watched the monks chant the vespers and then left on the train back to Luzern.

And now, for some pictures that aren't of twisted non-Euclidean nightmares!

Oops, no, sorry, this IS a twisted non-Euclidean nightmare. Specifically, it's the lengths to which I had to go to protect myself from the piercing cold. Well, the half-bangs thing is just me being dumb. Anyway, while dressed like a Tusken Raider, I went out and saw...

...this monastery, which contained...

...this very big library, featuring books such as...

...these.

Night of the Living Ducks! Well, swans, mostly. The story goes that the first pair of swans was given to the city of Luzern by a visiting German prince back in ye olden days. The swans have stayed there ever since of their own free will, which makes sense, considering all the delicious tourists, such as me, they have to eat.

The Swiss Saga, Day 1: Some Cheesy Pun

2008-03-15T15:47:00.000-07:00

And so, in the grand tradition of bringing you the latest news, days or weeks after it actually happens, I begin my series of short day-by-day descriptions of my academic vacation in German Speaking Switzerland!

On the day of, I woke up at 6 AM, fretted for an hour, walked to the train station in the windy cold, sat at the train station for an hour, tried to buy breakfast with a credit card but they only took cash, and wandered around looking for an ATM for an embarrassingly long time. When everyone showed up I found out to my dismay that pretty much everyone but me seemed to smoke cigarettes, in the same sense a scuba diver smokes compressed air. I got on the train and chatted with people, but mostly I just hovered on the edge of wakefulness.

When we got to Luzern, we deposited our bags in the hotel and went to lunch. Lunch which was a sort of potato and macaroni and cheese casserole of truly monstrous proportions. Afterward, we got on another train (this will be, by the way, the most train-intensive set of posts I will ever make) to Schwyz (Motto: “Th Tywn Wythyt Vywyls”) and took a walking tour. We saw the original charter of the Swiss Confederation, from 1291. As the day waned, we went to where any weary traveler in a new land would go: the cheese factory. Really. It was there that I found out all about the cheesemaking process, and that it is as complicated as it is disgusting as it is delicious. I also learned from a tour guide, speaking shaky English, that full-fat cheese can be used as a replacement for Viagra. Really. I say his English was shaky, but then again, I sure as hell couldn't say something like "our cheese cures erectile dysfunction" in any of the foreign languages I'M familiar with...

For dinner we were treated to fondue, made with homemade cheese. Of course, "homemade" in this instance means "made with various giant stainless-steel tubes and vats," but you get the idea. When we finally returned to the hotel, I went straight up to my room and passed out, possibly from some kind of cheese-related hemorrhaging. Interestingly, I would have been sharing the room, but my roommate, who is passionately (excessively) in love with his girlfriend who is also the trip, slept in her room that night and every night subsequently. It was mixed blessing, in that I got the room to myself, but that I was constantly reminded that I am alone...so very alone.

And now, time to inflict-a-pic or two from day 1 of my exodus into the hoary Teutonic foothills! They will be culturally enlightening and highly informative (or just immature pictures of funny German words)!

The square in Luzern outside the hotel. Some of the buildings date back to the 1400s, but most of them are younger than that, because apparently Luzern has fires ALL THE TIME. Seriously, I cannot count the number of times we were told, "...but then it burned down" over the course of our stay.

The store next to our hotel: Mephisto Footwear. The devil really DOES wear Prada!

Now THERE'S the money shot.

Th..iss...aga...Houston, we've got...ksshhh...

2008-03-12T11:29:00.000-07:00

9 days without inter...can't qui...come in, Command, t...in Zurich, tomorrow w...ack to Lugan...pdate blog as soon as I...

...losing...

ksssssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

The Swiss Saga: So Long, Farewell

2008-03-03T06:23:00.001-08:00

Why I no post?

I'll tell you why, buster: I'm packing my bags. I'm checkin' 'em twice. Gonna find out halfway through my trip that I forgot to bring something seemingly impossible to forget such as my shoes, and that's definitely not nice.

Academic Travel is coming to town.

Or rather, I'm coming to a different town as part of Academic Travel. Or...you know what, that extended allusion made little to no sense to begin with, so let's just move on.

The Academic Travel program at Franklin requires that students go on a two-week trip to various destinations with a group of other students and a teacher as a guide. To prepare for the trip, you take class that meets biweekly (in the once every two weeks sense) to instruct you on what you're going to see and how you need to prepare. Or, in my case, try desperately to convince me that where I'm going is worth seeing.

Yes, I managed to submit my application to Franklin at a date that could be considered before the deadline for application if you allow for adding negative numbers. The result is that, while I'm grateful to even be here, I got stuck with the last Academic Travel group that wasn't already full.
Imagine arriving fresh-faced in Switzerland, in many ways the hub of the Old World, practically equidistant from Moscow, London, and Giza. You can go to Greece and study the Parthenon, to Namibia and sleep on the Serengeti, to Paris and see the Louvre. And yours truly?

I will be traveling from Switzerland to...a different part of Switzerland.

Yup. And it's not even the part that speaks one of the two languages I've been studying all this time. Nope, I'm heading to the part that speaks German.

But I keed, I keed, of course. I'm totally psyched to get to go on a trip at all, although the fact that it replaces Spring Break is rather annoying. Then again, I have no fecking clue what Swiss people do for Spring Break, nor do I likely have the financial means to do it.

That said, it was rather pathetic to watch our chaperone teacher, Professor Parsons, go through our itinerary and say something along the lines of "Most people who come to study here, they stay here four years, and they never really get to know the country!" what seemed like six times per class.

So what will I be seeing, that makes this trip rival Casablanca and Washington D.C.? (Yes, they are putting people on a plane and flying them back to America for two weeks. Yes, I know that a lot of students here aren't from the United States or even from a state near D.C., but I just can't wrap my head around how the trip is economically feasible. We're just hopping on the 8:30 train; they have to fly a grand total of like 4000 miles.)

Well, we're coming and going from Zurich, seat of the Swiss parliament, and there we'll be sightseeing and learning about Swiss government. Then we're going into the countryside, staying in various smallish towns, and visiting a couple of 8th-century monasteries, a big ol' clock tower, Einstein's house, the James Joyce Foundation, and a bunch of other stuff I don't remember offhand.

But I think the site I'm most eager to see is the 50 CHF stipend we're given daily.

Yes. They bribe us to come on the trip.

Okay, it's supposed to be so we can feed ourselves, but since we're getting something like two meals per day already paid for already, I somehow think that I'm going to have a surplus at the end of the day. What will I buy with my embezzled riches? That remains to be seen! (hint: probably booze and souvenirs).

The most entertaining slash terrifying aspect of the trip so far is the professor himself. Floyd Parsons is a balding, white-haired, bearded, spectacled, slightly rotund man who speaks very fast and intensely, to the point where his breathing patterns are different when he's addressing the class. In short, he is the very soul of bizarre college professors everywhere, and I am sure he will be a delight.

So, bottom line, for the next two weeks, I may or may not be posting regularly. It depends on whether the hotels we stay in have Internet access, at least not the hotel kind that costs an immortal soul per hour and is slow as hell. In any case, I'll be keeping a daily log, and sooner or later, you'll be seeing it whether you like it or not. And pictures!

Wish me luck. Until next time, au revoir, arreviderci, auf wehedersein, so long, suckeresas!

Atomic Number 18...for ACTION!

2008-02-28T18:32:00.000-08:00

It would appear that I have escaped from the monolithic nightmare of Midterms Week unscathed, although perhaps I, like Agent Cooper, am still trapped in that hellish dimension, and what now walks the earth of men is a sinister doppelganger. In any case, here I am writing a blog very late at night, so if I am a doppelganger, I can't be THAT different.

It should be obvious by now that I enjoy fantasy, and given that I am devoting my free time to creating humor for you to read, you may surmise that I am somewhat of a writer. (Writers tend to do actual writing before their deadlines, but that's beside the point.) That is why I took a special interest in the Howardian epic tale of barbarian adventure that is Jim Theis' "The Eye of Argon." Theis published the original (which is accorded Shroud-of-Turin-like reverence among the faithful) in 1970 at the age of 16. Tragically, it seems that the author died in 2001, before he had the chance to give the world the gift of a sequel.

When I say "Howardian," what I mean is "resembling what you would get if you ate every Robert E. Howard story ever printed and then shat them onto a typewriter." It is a work of unparalleled genius in its sheer ineptitude. It is staggering in the quality and density of its flaws. It has no need whatsoever for MSTing, indeed, anything else one could say to mock it would be utterly meaningless in the face of the mockery inherent in its own text. In short, it is the Plan 9 of literature, and I for one am glad to have it. Every time I read a sentence, actual Robert E. Howard stories get that much better.

Here, I'll pick a random sentence from the opening chapter, as Gringr the barbarian dispatches some inept guards:

"A gasping gurgle from the soldier's writhing mouth as he tumbled to the golden sand at his feet, and wormed agonizingly in his death bed." I couldn't help but add emphasis, because I am simply compelled to highlight how GLORIOUSLY INSANE this is.

"[Gringr's] scandalous activities throughout the Simarian city had unleashed throngs of havoc and uproar among it's refined patricians, leading them to tack a heavy reward over his head." I daresay, if I had a heavy object looming over my head, I'd probably be just as tense and murderous as this poor fellow.

And one more, because I could do this all night:

"From where do you come barbarian, and by what are you called?" Gasped the complying wench, as Grignr smothered her lips with the blazing touch of his flaming mouth.

The engrossed titan ignored the queries of the inquisitive female, pulling her towards him and crushing her sagging nipples to his yearning chest. Without struggle she gave in, winding her soft arms around the harshly bronzedhide of Grignr corded shoulder blades, as his calloused hands caressed her firm protruding busts.

Gringr: Smoooooove like Butter.

And believe me, these are nowhere NEAR the best ones.

The Eye of Argon: Making The Results of All Other Human Endeavor Look Better Since 1970.

No Can Post

2008-02-27T08:40:00.000-08:00

Cannot post now.

In midterm hell.

Papers to write.

Instead, enjoy these two GIFs of Zenedine Zidane's headbutt in the World Cup, photoshopped with King of Fighters characters.

Working working working working working...

Thy Dungeoncrawl '08: THE PUNCHING OF THE GODS!

2008-02-24T20:01:00.000-08:00

It can wait no longer! Insomnia conquers laziness! Verbosity conquers recalcitrance! The thesaurus conquers all! The greatest epic of our time (noon to 6pm Saturdays) must be told! Tonight on this giant-size edition of Dave's Euro-Blog!

To discover the small but dedicated group of heroes who dare to brave my cyclopean labyrinth of misery, hie thee hither!

Our three amigos begin their journey in the small, quiet frontier town of New Varela, an outpost of life in the bleak tundra of the Northlands. Cold winds are ever at one's back. Great snow-capped mountains loom in the north, and their shadows are long. It is a ramshackle town, and rough, but the three are cold and hungry.

Teresa recalls the words of the oracle of Pelor: "A great evil wells up in the north, time runs short..." She knows not what she faces, but she faces it with the courage her lord has granted her.

Dust, the wanderer, the tale-spinner---for her to be wandering into a strange town with naught but the clothes on her back and the stories in her mind is nothing new. But now her wanderings are tinged with sadness, for what she has left behind. She once wrote words that she had hoped would topple a government, but exile was her only reward.

Saif saunters into town knowing that he could own it, that he could destroy it with a few minutes work (or so he is confident). Monster-hunter, mercenary without peer, master of the blade---he goes where it is most difficult for him, so that he can prove that he can: where dangers are most dire, so that he can overcome them. To live fully for a time, to win death or glory.

The company meets by the hearth of the local inn, where the coins they had plundered from men and monsters bought bountiful ale and warm food.

In the corner, two halflings speak quietly to each other in their native tongue. They then depart, leaving behind a parchment nailed to the wall. Intrigued, the party investigates:

WARRIORS NEEDED Monstrous bear threatens hunters and travelers. Forming a band to slay it. Reward provided. Skip and Holly Daggerdare, Hunters.

This, then, would be their first trial. After all, as my man Chris Sims says, bearfightin' is pretty much the standard by which all acts of badassery are measured. Hence, this scores approximately 2.3 kilobearfights.

So they meet with the halfings at dawn and trek out into the frozen wastes in search of this mysterious killer bear. All that they've been able to determine is that the bear is enormous and territorial, and that it...

HOLY CRAP THERE IT IS!

Not just any bear, but the biggest friggin' bear known to man, the dire bear. "Dire," in this case, meaning "Ungodly Fecking Huge." And trust me, it came out of nowhere. Or rather, it came out of a suspiciously bear-shaped snowbank. In any case, it was on.

The party reacts swiftly: Teresa summons forth her celestial steed and runs the beast through with her lance. Alas, only a glancing blow was dealt, and the furry monstrosity howled its rage as the mounted warrior galloped past, out of its reach and beyond its range.

Closer at hand was Saif, who, with a superhuman flying leap, rushed in to smite the creature's shaggy head with his unfeasibly large greatsword. His hopes for decapitation were dashed, however, by the bear's judicious application of one of the best monster feats of all time: "Large and In Charge." From the dumbest of names grow the sweetest of fruits. Without going into nerdful detail, I can tell you that this ability allows a large monster to swat anything that gets within its reach...with such force as to send them sprawling backward, well away from the monster itself. Thus, it's highly difficult to charge such an adversary, as Saif learned the hard way as he was batted aside like a child's toy.

It was at this point that Teresa the paladin noticed, with her divine gift of Detect Evil, that Saif was beginning to radiate evil. His eyes glittered sinisterly and something inside him seemed to be struggling to get out.

And then it got awesome.

Large monsters such as the dire bear are generally very good at grappling. In the case of the dire bear, "grappling" is not quite as give-and-take as the word implies. For the dire bear, grappling means shredding you with foot-long claws and eating you. Which is precisely what it proceeded to do to Saif, pinning him to the frozen ground like a collector's butterfly as it strove to crack the hard shell this morsel seemed to be packed in.

Saif, unable to swing his greatsword, and highly distressed from being, you know, devoured, did what any sensible adventurer who was by that point possessed by unquenchable rage would do:

He started punching the bear in the face with his spiked gauntlets.

The damage he ended up inflicting with his bearpunchin' was minimal, but the image will live forever. But a giant bear was not the coolest thing that he punched that evening. Consider yourselves FORESHADOWED.

Meanwhile, Dust was doing what she does best: offering highly encouraging advice while staying comfortably far away from the monsters. A bard can be very effective against human foes, charming, dominating, or confusing them. A savage, primeval bear, however, proved a bit too difficult to charm or manipulate. Nonetheless, she helped out with her morale-boosting running commentary on the battle ("And then, the big stupid smelly bear, who TOTALLY had no idea who he was messing with, kept chewing on Saif's torso, like it matters or something..."), which inspired her allies to strike with deadlier precision.

The rest of the fight was a struggle to keep Saif from being eaten alive, as the bear was stubbornly refusing to discontinue his meal, even in the face of arrows, charging paladins, and the occasional lightning bolt from Holly the halfling. Eventually, the bear, who by now was wounded in a dozen places, decided that the crunchy morsel was more trouble than it was worth, and turned to easier prey. Holly was caught within range of the bear's deadly claws, and it almost casually slashed her belly open, leaving her to bleed out her life in the snow. Shocked, the party redoubled its efforts as her brother Skip came dashing to her side. Even a near-fatal blow from the paw of the great beast did not deter his desperate rush to save his sister.

The mounted paladin ran the monster through with her lance, and it roared in agony, its thick blood splashing across the snow. And then, Saif, chewed nearly to death, made a flying leap and landed atop the monster's back, and plunged his massive blade betwixt the beast's shoulder blades. With a shuddering cry, the great bear fell to the earth, to rise no more.

And that's how Saif acquired his giant bearskin cloak.

But while the local tannery was hard at work, the party had other business to attend to. Hearing rumors of an abandoned, supposedly haunted, tower in the evergreen forest to the south, the party decided to investigate once the scars of battle had healed. Dust, feeling inadequate because she could not safely wound the beast during the fight, decided to equip herself with a bow. Told to visit an eccentric old gnome shaman, she found the shaman's humble hut, as well as her pet sabertooth cat. The wizened old lady told Dust that she could carve her a fine bow if she were to retrieve some wood from a particular grove in the evergreen forest. She was told to look for a spot where no snow fell. And with that, the group trekked back to the forest and entered.

The trio wandered for a while, looking for the fabled grove, when suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Saif noticed something odd. It looked like the outline of a white, antlered stag, moving across the snow like a shadow. The stag bolted at his glance, and he pursued, calling to the girls to come.

But strangely, it was then that a second white, ephemeral stag appeared, speaking to Dust in a language that was unknown to Teresa, but which brought tears to her eyes at its sheer beauty. Dust told her that the stag wanted the two to follow it, but warned not to follow their companion, who had taken off through the woods.

Meanwhile, Saif was running through the woods after the white snow-stag, which always seemed to be just beyond his reach. At that point, I rolled for him a Will save. For the non-DnD-savvy, Will saves are basically tests of how strong your mind is--whether or not you succumb to madness or mind control or the like. Hearing your DM say "Make a Will save" during a seemingly innocuous encounter is a sure sign that you're in for a bad day. And Samy's luck didn't turn any better as he rolled an abysmal result.

"So," I said, "you get this stifling tunnel vision. All you can see, all you care about, is that fricking white stag. So you run after it. You run and run and run. It occurs to you, in the back of your mind, that you seem to be running at about sixty miles per hour. But you don't even think twice. You just keep running. And when the white stag leaps into the air, it doesn't occur to you that you shouldn't be able to run after it. But you do. You just up and run into the sky, chasing that goddamn white stag as fast as you can. And then, later, you can't really tell how later, you come down from the clouds and suddenly...you make a Will save."

So he did, and he did much better than the first time. And he woke up from his delirium and found himself lying in the snow in an unfamiliar location.

He tries to stand, but he finds that his feet are covered in third degree burns, to the point where the bones are visible under the charred flesh, and the soles of his shoes are gone. He can't walk so good. Samy at this point gives a heartfelt and profane response, and I switch back to the ladies.

They are led by the spectral ice stag to the fabled snowless grove. There, the white hart leaps into the center of the grove, and instantly a multitude of similar apparitions leap from all sides of the clearing and merge into the center of the grove. The cloud of frosty dust coalesces into a giant winged stag, floating off the ground, whose feet dissolve into a cloud of ice. FREAKING OUT NOW.

The winged stag speaks to Dust for a while in the beautiful, lilting language, then gives her a log. Seriously. The winged stag disperses in a gust of icy wind, and snow begins to fall over the once-green glen.

Dust, holding a log, stumbles back towards civilization. She says little of what the creature told her, save that it says that she is a child of destiny, and great and terrible things were on the horizon. But then they realize Saif's gone.

Unfortunately, the two of them aren't exactly prepared to search for him, because they are cold and tired and have absolutely no survival skills between them. So they return to town, in search of anyone who could help them find their friend.

They find the old gnome, whose name is Tella Timbereye, and a strange, smiling elf male who has taken up residence in the inn. He says he serves the Laughing God, Olidammara, and generally creeps everyone out with his constant mirth. Nonetheless, he's actually a semi-competent cleric, so he's recruited to look for Saif.

Tella takes the group to the edge of town and, revealing exactly what kind of shaman she is, turns into a giant raven. Yep, she's a druid, who are renowned for controlling animals and plants and shapeshifting. So Dust and the laughing elf rode the giant raven off towards the woods to look for Saif, while Teresa and her full plate armor were too heavy and stayed behind.

Meanwhile, Saif, in typical Saif fashion, has been crawling along the ground for a while in the direction he thinks New Varela is. Pretty soon, his incinerated feet go completely numb from the snow, so, great! Now he can walk on them. Or, well, stagger. But hey. So he sets off on his unfeeling, mutilated stumps, and after about an hour is beginning to freeze to death. Well, a normal person would be freezing to death. As a PC, Saif is really only mildly inconvenienced by the sharp tendrils of icy death, in spite of him wearing a highly thermally-conductive suit of metal armor.

He lopes along, but as he goes he gets an increasingly unsettling sense that there's something lurking just at the edge of his vision, but every time he looks, there's nothing. Then it's gone for a minute, but comes back.

This goes on for about five more hours, and with each passing hour, he starts going progressively more insane. Really. He seems to be drawing near the edge of the forest, so New Varela is presumably somewhere nearby, but by that point he is convinced that there is a barely-visible creature lurking in his peripheral vision that's whispering things to him. As the hours drag by, the whispers get more and more clear, although they are very incoherent and rambling. But the gist of what the thing is trying to say is that Saif ought to let whatever it is rip his chest open, eat his heart, and replace it with a heart of ice, and then Saif can be its friend and eat human flesh with it. And Saif, whose Wisdom score has by now dropped from 12 (above-average) to 5 (psychotic), is beginning to think this sounds like a good idea.

So Saif finally collapses at the edge of the forest, and the thing that has been stalking and maddening him finally reveals itself:

Yes: a demonic floating yeti-creature with jagged fangs, glowing eyes, and charred stumps for feet with the tibia sticking out. In other words, a wendigo.

The wendigo (or windigo, or wiitigo) is one of the few (that I know of) monsters native to North America. And they are awesome. Read up on their mythology, and suddenly, Saif's predicament makes a lot more sense. They prey on men who have evil hearts (usually cannibals and murderers, but also, maybe, people who have demons living in their body), they lure them away into the wilderness, the victim runs after so fast their feet burn away, and then they become one. Saif, by making his Will save at the crucial time, escaped the wendigo madness just in time to keep his feet from completely disintegrating. But the wendigo wasn't done.

It appears, hovering in front of Saif, whispering insane promises to him. And Saif is about to listen to the wendigo, and let it infect him with its curse, because he's fairly crazy at that point. But then, Saif uses one of his secret techniques from his Warblade training.

It is a technique that allows him to use a skill called Concentration in place of the Will save he now has to make. Since he's mostly insane by now, his Will save is subsequently not so hot. But his Concentration skill is just as good as it always was. In essence, he overpowers the forces of madness by saying, "Hey, wait...I'm not supposed to listen to people, I'm supposed to be hitting them!" Yes: Even in the throes of insanity, his basic, involuntary reaction to the world around him is to murder monsters.

So the wendigo hovers up next to him and tries to bite him, to infect him with the wendigo curse. And Saif?

Saif punches the wendigo in the face.

And when this happened, all I could think of was another misunderstood anti-hero who went around punching supernatural horrors so hard they died:

The wendigo floated away, peeved that its face just got bashed in. Unfortunately, its unnatural metabolism allowed it to heal completely within moments. So now the wendigo is out of punching range, and Saif's legs don't quite work. So, what to do...I dunno...how about...

Throw your greatsword at it.

Unfortunately it doesn't go that well, and by that, I mean he tosses the sword an misses by a good twenty feet, and then the wendigo goes and steals his sword. It then turns back into a white stag and flies off, but this time Saif is in no mood to chase it.

So...you know, this post is long enough already, so I'll cut to the chase. Saif gets found by the rescue party, and proceeds to punch everyone who gets anywhere near him. So the sane members of the group have to figure out how to knock him unconscious, which, given that he was mauled by a bear and survived, would prove to be rather difficult. But in the end, he was subdued, hogtied, and brought to Tella Timbereye's hut for healing. He's out for a couple days, and he wakes up violent and crazy, but Tella and the laughing elf cast curing magic and restore his sanity, although even with their healing magic, his feet are badly mangled and he has difficulty walking.

The party is back, safe and more or less sound! But what could possibly top this tale of madness and punching? How about A CLASH OF FIENDISH TITANS ON THE BLOODY FIELDS OF SLAUGHTER? Be there!

"And They Shall Know No Cheer..."

2008-02-21T04:42:00.001-08:00

In a crazed, desperate bid to get mentioned by comic-book-blogging-madman Chris Sims, Esq., I now leap wholeheartedly into day 4 of his unstoppable, untoppable Bring it On Week.

If you haven't yet had the pleasure, 2000's Bring it On is indeed the pinnacle of cheerleader-based cinema. Sims himself has expounded on what might be termed the cheernre of cheer-related cheernimatography, and BiO stands tall atop the miniskirted corpses of its competitors, metaphorically speaking. Naysayers, I say only this: you know what else had THREE SEQUELS made to it, and is awesome? Die Hard. The parallels are staggering indeed.

There are many things to love about this film. Its message of perseverance, teamwork, and cooperation. Its amazingly realistic portrayal of "teen-agers" and their "life-style." The truly stupefying amount of midriff. And, of course, actresses in bikinis washing cars.

But today I'm going to talk about the title.

Not much at first, is it? "Bring it On." Bring. It. On. In these three simple words, we find a message that transcends cheesy teenage catchphrases, something that speaks to the very core of our humanity.

Bring. The title asks, nay, demands that we take action. We are not here to be passively entertained, like cattle chewing their cud. We have come to be engaged, to rise from our stupor into the light of reason. This is a film that asks, before the first flickers of its light reach one's eyes, "WHO? WHO AMONG YOU HAS THE COURAGE, THE WILL, TO BRING IT ON???" And when we see the glitter of soapy water splashing upon pert breasts, the flash of bright pom-poms exploding into our consciousness, we rise, trembling with the revelation, and cry to the heavens themselves, "I WILL ANSWER YOUR CALL!"

It. The indefinite. The formless mystery, forever without an identity, meaning all things and none. What shall we bring on? we ask ourselves, fearing, doubting. Why do you not instruct us, your loyal and faithful servants? But then, when we receive no answer, we realize. We see that what must be brought on is not any one thing. It is whatever we strive for. It is our hopes, our fears, all that makes us human---we must bring it on, and stride confidently towards our dreams, that no matter where we roam we will know we follow the true path.

On. Not off. On. Alive. Alert. Active. Thrumming with power, with potential, stirring from the primordial muck into dynamic vigor. To cheer is to live---to seize life and crush it to your lips, to drink deeply of the joys and woes of mortality, to be forever on...always ready, always alert, prepared to take on rival cheer squads and existential despair in equal measure. If it is not on, like unto Donkey Kong, then such a life is scarce worth living.

This, the Cheerma Sutra, the Cheerfold Path, the New Cheerstament: may it guide you to peace...and wisdom.

Is it for cheer to wet a widow's eye
That thou consumest thyself in single life?
---William Shakescheer

The Greatest Story Ever Mole'd

2008-02-17T01:59:00.001-08:00

Every Sunday in the kitchen of one of the residence halls here, people get together and make burritos. Sweet, delicious burritos, always perfect for a pre-DnD snack. Unfortunately, poor Samy actually didn't know what a burrito was. Needless to say, the DnD Krew sprang to enlighten him, directing him to that endless font of Internet knowledge, Wikipedia. But just one Wiki page devoted to the intricacies of the burrito was not enough. No, they needed to create what may well be the most awesome page on the entire internet:

THE TIMELINE OF THE BURRITO.

And it is sheer poetry. I ask you: have you not lain awake many a sleepless night, tossing and turning in existential doubt, pleading with some unhearing God, "If only there was a chronologically-arranged list of interesting milestones in the history of the burrito! Is there no balm in Gilead?" And I say to you: YOUR DAY HAS COME!

This paramount of modern literature, comparable to the sonnets of Shakespeare, gives us the whole picture: From its roots in ancient Aztec cooking, to its birth in 1840, up to the present day, as new and exciting burrito-related events continue to captivate our attention. I'll hit the highlights here, but trust me: it must be seen to be believed.

→ The quintessential love-song to the mighty burrito, published in 1993 by John Roemer and titled, I swear, "Cylindrical God."

→ The world's largest burrito, which weighs 4500 pounds.

→ "1998: Washington Post sends Peter Fox to search for origins of burrito," which sounds to me like a dandy plot for Indiana Jones 4.

→ A small schoolboy's tinfoil-wrapped burrito is mistaken for a weapon, and the school goes on lockdown while armed police officers take the burrito by force.

→ "Rubio's Lobster Burrito Lawsuit." HOLY CRAP! "Have YOU been wronged by a burrito? Simon, Harlan & Horowitz can get you the MONEY YOU DESERVE."

→ A sinister conspiracy known only as "The Burrito Project."

→ ONLINE BURRITO ORDERING SYSTEM.

→ "October 30th, 2006: After hearing expert testimony, Massachusetts judge rules that a burrito is not a sandwich." That is the SECOND piece of burrito-based litigation in as many years, BTW.

It is your duty as a citizen to read the glorious history of the greatest of all Mexican-American culinary achievements. Because, at last, the secret history of the burrito is no longer...

UNDER WRAPS!

Thy Dungeoncrawl '08: Heroes of our Time!

2008-02-16T16:36:00.000-08:00

You have waited for real content...LONG ENOUGH! I cast off the shackles of Spongebob-vs.-Nazis and deadly, deadly ungulates and dive headfirst into the tropical lagoon of relevant and interesting blogging, not to mention heavily mixed metaphor!

And with what will I whet your want of my withering wit?

Dungeons and Dragons! Yep, 'fraid so.

Yes, for two terrible weeks my exploits as the cruel, heartless Master of various and sundry Dungeons has gone un-chronicled! Except by the party chronicler, but I’ll get to her in a second. Now, I know that my unhealthy levels of geekdom are not suited to ~~any~~ everyone, so I will spare you all of the nuts-and-bolts-and-dice details of the games we’ve been playing. I will strive to present you with a thrilling interactive fantasy epic, with minimal amounts of incomprehensible nerd-babble (he said, actually believing it).

And so, I give you our dramatis personae:

(An excruciatingly unnecessary aside: My photos always turn out terrible because people are never sitting still in them. This is because I am a terribly shy photographer. I am always the only one in the room with a big, dorky tourist camera, and I always end up just surreptitiously pulling it out, snapping a pic while whistling nonchalantly, and then putting the camera away without even looking at the result, and then fleeing the building. Thus, the idea of asking those being photographed to hold still and pose is usually beyond me. It doesn't help that my camera seems to require a daguerreotype-like exposure period, and holding it still for that long is often difficult, especially when I've been drinking.)

Now, to introduce my mewling playthings. Right to left---that's right, MANGA STYLE, BITCHES!---we have:

Ashley, seen above moving with blinding speed, is playing DnD for the first time under my masterful tutelage. She gravitated toward the noble calling of Paladin, holy knights who bring honor and decency to the savage corners of the world by hacking things to death. Thus, she plays Teresa the human paladin, sent by the church of Pelor the sun god to investigate the oracle's prophecy of doom that stalks in the northlands. Although adept at stabbing things with a variety of sharp implements, she has proved thus far to be a much-needed voice of sanity and non-muderousness. This role is especially important, considering her company, such as the character played by

Tina, who you may remember as my partner in debauchery from a while back. She had from the start a clear vision of her character, and it was to be a bard. Now, Bards in DnD are most known for using the power of music, dance, or other performance art to perform magical abilities. Yes, if you mess with a bard. he will use the Power of Rock to put you in a coma. I know a lot of people complain about bards, but I find that to be completely BAD ASS. However, her character is perhaps even more radical than the standard-model bard. Her bard is a writer. (And here's where our characters start to get completely crazy.) She creates magic by writing what's going to happen to you in her book. And her book has a hidden, spring-loaded bayonet in it. It's not often that you will get to write an autobiography that includes the phrase "I stabbed him to death with my book," and you can take that to the BANK. And what could such a dashing magical auteur be named? Brace yourselves: Dust Ofevsky. And she wields a rapier named Robespierre. So, you may ask, what does she look like? What mental image shall we attach to this awesomely bad appellation? I'll tell you. She is a seven-foot tall woman with silver hair, who is the great-great-great-great granddaughter of an angel from Elysium. And according to her, she weighs one hundred and twenty pounds. So we basically have an sexy female Jack Skellington with a stabby-book, and THAT is the sensational character find of 2008. Even awesomer, she's functioning as the party's record-keeper, with her laptop (standing in for Dust's knife-book) a'blazing. And then there's

Samy, a grizzled DnD veteran who knows what he wants out of his characters: massive amounts of blood-spattered dismemberment. And he was not left wanting. He carefully crafted the most stompariffic character possible, using spreadsheets I think, designed to deal the most ludicrous amounts of damage possible. His class of choice is the Warblade, a mystical sect of fighters who are so good at killing things that their moves become like unto things of magic. Warblades strive for the perfection of the art of combat and become adept at using techniques from any of nine different ancient fighting styles. Sometimes this means a warblade can run on water or do a twenty-foot standing high jump. Sometimes, as in this case, the warblade is able to hit things extremely hard. The warblade doing the hitting here is named Saif, which is Arabic for "sword," and that's pretty cool (Samy is from the United Arab Emirates). But wait, there's more. In essence, Samy, the player, sold his character's soul to the Devil in return for more power. The Devil being, of course, me, who okayed his deal. Samy is what we call a powergamer. He wants maximum power. He's willing to sacrifice things to get it. And oh, I was willing to give him power...but at what price? You see, here is Saif's story. He was kidnapped as a baby and raised by a mysterious cult that was seeking to return an Ancient God of Darkness™ to the mortal world. To do this, they needed a living vessel to contain the god's power, and since the possessed victim would retain his physical strength but lose his mind to the god's power, it made sense to have the mightiest vessel possible. So Saif was trained in war from infancy and grew to be a mighty warrior. However, when the day of the god's rebirth came and the ritual was completed, something went Terribly Wrong™, and the cult was obliterated---except for him, who wound up with a demonic presence inhabiting his body. He was granted great strength and skill, but has to fight constantly against being consumed by evil. This was Samy's proposal to me. His character would be more powerful than most...but I would get to do whatever I wanted with his demonic housemate. And I tell you, I am going to have some fun.

Now you know their stories...but a new chapter of their lives is being forged! Be here next time to read of their adventures in the world of fantasy and violence!

A BEAR GETS PUNCHED IN THE FACE!

DARE YOU MISS IT?

Alpacalypse Now!

2008-02-15T15:48:00.000-08:00

THEY HUNGER!

BEWARE, THEY LIVE!

RUN, COWARD!

And an image that requires no further embellishment from me:

AN ALPACA ADMINISTERING A SUSTAINED AND BRUTAL BEATING ON A SMALL CHILD.

Notice how the alpaca isn't looking at the boy he's in the process of trampling to death. No...he's looking...at us.

Looking...watching...waiting.

Tonight's post has been brought to you by Google Image Search = "angry+alpaca," with special guest, Sinistar. And yes, tragically, this will probably not be the last post I make solely based off a pun in the title.

Spongebob's Offer You Can't Refuse!

2008-02-14T11:22:00.000-08:00

My friend Doug mailed me this. I am posting it for you.

The Greatest Films Of Our Time As Done By Characters From Spongebob Squarepants.

YOUR MIND HAS NOW BEEN BLOWN.

Further lucubration is unnecessary.

Radness, Thy Name Is...Unreasonably Long

2008-02-11T07:33:00.001-08:00

When I arrived at Franklin, a penniless waif with no one to turn to, I checked out all the clubs and events that I could in the hopes of finding and bonding with like-minded nincompoops such as myself, and that is how I ended up attending the Anime Club. As it turns out, that club has been a fertile pool of fellow geeks who I have recruited for Dungeons and Dragons, but the anime facet has been a lot of fun as well.

I don't consider myself a hardcore anime fan. I will watch shows that seem interesting, but in the same way I'd watch any other show that looked cool. However, I know that for a lot of people, anime means either violent adolescent fantasy and/or Titmonster Tentacle Rape. But I assure you that there are gems of sheer awesomeness to be found.

I swore that I would not gush about incredibly nerdy things on this blog. That I would not subject you, the innocent public, to the unlighted and unfathomable depths of my soul.

That said, Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann kicks SO MUCH ASS.

Go ahead. Read the title out loud. I'll go make a sandwich.

...

Okay, so, did y...oh. You're still reading it. Well, I guess I could make some lemonade or something...

Okay, so, unwieldy moniker or no, this show is pretty much everything that is great about Japanese animation, multiplied by a factor of awesome.

I won't get into the plot, because it barely matters. This is a show that features giant robots, a chick in a bikini shooting an electric rail gun AT giant robots, giant robots fighting OTHER giant robots, a post-apocalyptic society of subterranean humans, a stampede of giant moles, and katana battles. AND THAT'S JUST THE FIRST EPISODE.

Did I mention the giant robots are literally powered by manliness?

"Go beyond the possible! Kick reason to the curb!"

Carnevale: Epilogue

2008-02-10T13:09:00.001-08:00

Well, the Internet situation in my room is still screwy. It seems like ONE of the two outlets works. Unfortunately, it's the one that my roommate traditionally uses. So I kind of have to fight him over it and steal it when he's not around. And, of course, the IT people can't POSSIBLY come on the weekend. So...

Anyway, in my grand tradition of bringing you up-to-the-minute news two or three days after it happens, I'll show you how my life as a jet-setting, raconteur has progressed. Only a few days after playing escort to all the lovely ladies, I was out puttin' on the Ritz at the Franklin College Jazz Night!

(Have I mentioned how many freakin' girls there are here?)

Yes, I went out to mix where Rockefellers walk with sticks and umberellers in their midst...oooooorrrrr where a bunch of coeds wearing pretty dresses got to stand and chit-chat over music for three hours.

So yeah, it wasn't the most thrilling event, but I got to dress up in a suit and tie (the attire was advertised as "Semi-Formal," which is just about all I can manage), and they served free hors d'oeuvre and wine, so in the end it was worth it. And I didn't even need to take a train to get there!

So I had a good time, out with all the molls with the great gams and hep young daddy-o's, although we had to 86 the hooch when the bulls came and and busted up the joint. It was keen, all right, real on the level, see? Now you're on the trolley!

Carnevale '08: Countdown to Carnevalemageddon!

2008-02-08T09:05:00.000-08:00

So, that whole thing where I told you, my trusting readers, that the Internet was fixed and everything was back to normal? Yeah, not so much. It died immediately after that post, and now it's still gone. I asked the IT department to come fix it and they said they would this morning. It's 6 PM now. Hmm.

But that won't stop me from bringing you the sexotic phantasmagoria of this year's Carnevale festivale, held in beautiful Bellinzona, Switzerland, and attended by yours truly, and also me.

Carnevale, for those not "in the know," or even anywhere near the know, is basically the non-union equivalent of Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras (from the French words for "drunk flashers") is the celebration of Shrove Tuesday, which is the day before Ash Wednesday, five days after Flange Thursday, and 200 years away from any religious significance. The practice, dating back, I dunno, a really long time, is a bacchanalian revel celebrating the last day before Lent. I suppose the idea is that you will wake up at the beginning of Lent so hung over that you swear off something manageable like bright light or loud noises, instead of a more rigorous challenge like avarice or envy.

The Carnevale near Franklin College, in Bellinzo na, is a tradition among students here. In actuality, the festivities last for about five days BEFORE the actual day it's meant to celebrate, but who am I to judge? Maybe the scriptures actually say it's supposed to be Shrove Fivesday.

The elements of Carnevale are loud music, costumes, and being phenomenally drunk, not necessarily in that order. I'm proud to say that I at least attempted all of these three elements.

The adventure began at 7 PM, when I met with Christina, the girl who asked me to come with her.

Her costume is, according to her, the character of Death, from the Pardoner's Tale. My guess, "A nerd with a paper plate on her chest," is also a legitimate answer. I opted for the classic Halloween standby of "whatever I can find at the last minute," and went as:

The CEO of UnderpantsOnHeadCo., Inc. Shame? I have none.

Accompanying us was a diverse group of...three more lovely young ladies.

So YEAH. I considered myself a gentleman escort, although in reality if they weren't there to lead me around I'd no doubt have ended up hopelessly lost and freezing to death and vomited upon. Still, I think they appreciated having a male presence, considering that most other males at Carnevale were drunk Italian strangers.

Naturally, the drinking commenced at around 8, about an hour before we actually got to Carnevale. Considering that while inside the gates of Carnevale, 12 Swiss francs buys you approximately a Dixie cup full of beer, it's a must that you pre-party before entering. So really, the whole Carenvale experience boils down to getting drunk, getting on a train, going somewhere, getting MORE drunk, and then trying to find your way back. Needless to say, it's staggeringly popular.

So we departed, already well on the road to inebriation, and made our way to the train station and took off to Bellinzona. It was a half-hour train ride on a train packed with drunk teenagers, each of whom seemed to be taking each breath through a lit cigarette. Can't say I particularly enjoyed it, but the girls and I chatted and passed the time kicking empty wine bottles back and forth.

We got to Bellinzona, passed through the gates:

And got frisked, not to make sure we weren't bringing in bombs, but to make sure we weren't bringing in our own liquor. Right.

And so, we went off and danced. Yes. We danced, because we wanted to. We left our friends behind. 'Cause our friends didn't dance, and because they didn't dance, well, they're no friends of mine.

The blurriness in this photograph is a representation of the vision of most of the partygoers. Or maybe they watched the tape from The Ring. Or maybe one of them is a ghost. Look, I don't know.

Anyway, we had a lovely time dancing, wandering around, eating gyros, and more dancing. Oh, and we met Spock:

So a good time was had by all. I actually ended the evening disappointingly sober. I don't know why. I mean, I literally drank all my liquor and spent all my money on more liquor, but I still wasn't drunk. I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing, but at least it meant I had the presence of mind to take precious memory photos such as this:

If you look closely, you can identify a couple of humanoid figures as well as what seems to be a giant potato with a nose looming in the right half of the frame.

So in spite of my nontoxication, I had the time of my life. I mean, one man arm-in-arm with four beautiful, young, fairly drunk young women?

That's hard to beat.

The Time of Great Darkness

2008-02-06T07:55:00.000-08:00

Just after the Sundering of the Toilet, there was a car accident in the rainy night outside of my dorm building. (Coincidence? Perhaps. Or perhaps the conflux of diabolical energies that conspired to rend asunder the toilet had its sinister tendrils in other earthly affairs.) It was pretty wild, although I didn’t see it, and apparently the careening vehicle knocked over some wires around the building. No one, to my knowledge, was hurt, but there was a casualty far greater than mere human life: the Internet.

Yes, for the past two days there has been no Internet access in my building. Death is scarce more fearful. I dreamed of the grave. Often I would close tightly my eyes for fear of what I would see should I open them. In the darkness I haunted the cold places where once the bright glow of ichc.com filled me with mirth. I conversed with madness itself and found it a friend and companion in the long hours.

I also went to Carnivale. That's probably more interesting.

So, in summary, no posts, but posts soon!

The Fall of the Toilet of Usher

2008-02-03T00:03:00.000-08:00

Lo! 'tis a gala night

Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

I remember when it happened quite clearly; in fact, I remember it as though it had happened only five or ten minutes ago. It was an early hour of the morning, and I, having imbibed a great quantity of water afore I took to my bed, as is my habit, had awoken with a great and pressing need to expel urine from my sack of pee.

At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!

I approached the toilet with all the reverence and dignity accorded to the situation. Never did it cross my mind that perhaps this toilet would slowly and inexorably fall to the relentless scourge of the eons, that one day as I reached for its pallid plastic lit I would find it turned to dust with the passing of the years, and the bathroom now only a shrine to ghosts and whispers. A wiser man, now, am I, for this encounter at dawn.

Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

My hand pulled down the toilet seat, and I felt it pull away from its mother, like a limb of a rotting tree it fell away in my cruel grasp, and in my horror I let it tumble to the floor. Could this be? Could the toilet, ever pristine, have crumbled? The lid had come undone...but surely the seat...

Out- out are the lights- out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm...

While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

Note: That's "The Conqueror Worm," not "The Haunted Palace," which is the poem that actually APPEARS in "The Fall of the House of Usher." Yes, I am a nerd.

Excuses, Excuses

2008-01-30T16:19:00.001-08:00

Current Mood:

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I haven't really done anything interesting lately. Today I got back from yet another journey to the Museum at the End of the Universe, and got to see some more interesting behind-the-scenes stuff. You probably already know this from Scooby-Doo or whatever, but museums tend to have tons and tons of stuff sitting around in the basement that's not on display. It's too bad, because there's lots of cool stuff lying around in the Museo della Culture, such as not one but TWO different kinds of canoes, and a bunch of kick-ass Congolese swords.

Still, it's pretty annoying that we keep having class at the museum, which is definitely not what the course description suggested. I was thinking we'd go there, at most, once every other week, but between last Wednesday, this Wednesday, and next Wednesday, it's going on three weeks in a row. Oh well, at least I'm learning to navigate Lugano. But my Wednesdays are really long, slogging days for me, and there are almost no opportunities to get food on Wednesdays for me. Assuming I wake up at around 2 in the afternoon (I do), I go straight from Italian 100 to my Academic Travel Preparation Meeting, and from there to the five-hour free-time vortex of Anthropology of Art. I'm busy from 2 to around 9 at night, which isn't that bad for a once-a-week thing, but it still sucks. At least in public school they feed you. The problem is that by the time I'm done with class, no stores are open and I'm too tired to even bother going to a restaurant. Tonight, for instance, I dined chez moi on some delicious Migros Budget Crackers coated with Migros Budget Hazelnut Spread. And I will say that Nutella, even off-brand budget generic Nutella, is damn delicious.

So to sum up a long, exhaustion-induced rambling, actual content will resume soon. I plan on telling you guys about the wonder that is the Migros experience, because it is a story that must be told.

Okay, the REAL reason I haven't posted? I cannot stop listening to THIS:

Super Smash Brothers Brawl: March 9th!

So...

2008-01-26T13:42:00.000-08:00

...The whole Dungeons and Dragons Extravapalooza, uh, never...actually...happened.

Yeah, no one showed up. I guess people DO have better things to do on Friday nights than play DnD, like drinking.

So I'm kind of miffed, but I'll persevere. I'm sure once we get going people will make time for it.

Although last night I did laundry AND made ravioli AT THE SAME TIME, so it wasn't a total loss.

Tiamat vs. Jörmungandr: WHO YA GOT???

2008-01-24T15:51:00.000-08:00

Getting into the nerd spirit, I give you:

JORMUNGANDRTHE WORLD-SERPENT!
THE SCOURGE OF MIDGARD!
SLAYER OF THE MIGHTY THOR!

VERSUS

TIAMATQUEEN OF THE PRIMORDIAL ABYSS!
MOTHER OF THE GREAT DEMON LEGION!
SHE IS UMMU-HUBUR, WHO FORMED ALL THINGS!

IN A PANTHEON-SHATTERING WAR TO END ALL WARS!

THE SERPENT THE SIZE OF THE EARTH!

THE DRAGON AS LARGE AS THE SEAS!

WHOEVER WINS...WE LOSE!!!

Down with the Sickness

2008-01-24T12:31:00.001-08:00

Aak. It would seem that my hours of walking about in the forty-degree cold wearing a Legend of Zelda tee-shirt and pajama bottoms has taken a ghastly toll, and I have been infected with some bizarre Swiss contagion. Scrofula, perhaps, or maybe Dropsy or The Grippe or the dreaded "Phthisis Pulmonales." (Seriously, the names for 19th-century diseases were awesome.)

However, I am resolved, with a will like unto a thing of iron, that this present malaise will not prevent me from this weekend's upcoming "Dungeons and Dragons Diceapalooza 2008: Dungeonocalypse Crawlmageddon!"

Yes, it is ON. My geekdom knows no bounds, and I've managed to find a fine bunch of fellow misanthropes who would like nothing better than to spend their Friday nights pretending to be magical warriors.

Roll initiative, fools!

*cough cough*

You Dirty Slat, You

2008-01-23T22:35:00.000-08:00

I don't mind practically anything about my room, although of course the view could be nicer. And also the lights keep burning out, and the only way to get new light bulbs is to put in a work order to the maintenance staff. And there was mold on the bathroom ceiling when we got here, which maintenance fixed over the course of three hours by using the painstaking detoxification technique of painting over it. And the Internet jacks (both of them) are on one side of the room and my bed is on the other, so in order to have a semi-decent connection there has to be a cord running across the length of the room, which is often kicked or tripped over and thus comes unplugged. And it's located on the third floor, which adds another layer of Fate's impish taunts after a long day of hiking to and from class. And the halls echo so much that the sound of people walking up and down the stairs sounds like the Wehrmacht marching through Paris. And, of course, it's a double which seems to me to be barely big enough for one person to live sanely in.

...there are A LOT of things that I mind about my room, but there's one thing, Scarecrow, that I'm going to hate most of all:

The slats on the goddamn bed keep falling out.

Yes, the bed keeps breaking. It happened the moment I first lay upon it, it happened a couple minutes after I started writing this post, and it happens...IT JUST HAPPENS TOO FECKING MUCH.

Now, there are, of course, factors that I would think would cause the slats on the bottom of a bed to give way. These number two: One, really raunchy sex (I wish), and two, being extremely overweight (no...well, not yet at least). But no, this apparently is the kind of bed that just plumb don't work right. With regular and reasonable levels of use, this bed will collapse, on average, once per day.

I have seriously considered putting my mattress on the floor and being done with it, but due to the aforementioned eeeeetty-bitty living space, that would mean no access to the fridge and plenty of steps on my head. My other idea is to get a piece of plywood that would go over the bed frame, but short of stealing one from a construction site I have no idea how to get a very specifically-sized piece of study board.

Oh, Bitch, Bitch, Bitch!

Museo della Culture

2008-01-23T13:01:00.000-08:00

So, as part of my anthropology class today, we hit up the Villa Helena, which contains the Lugano Museo della Culture, which contains ethnic Indo-Africo-Oceania artwork, which contains much awesome. It's the perfect place to take a bunch of students in a class called "Anthropology of Art," except for one tiny detail:

IT IS APPROXIMATELY ELEVENTY-BILLION LIGHTYEARS AWAY.

Yes folks, today was a day of walking. Yes, there was a bus involved, but I'm convinced it was provided only at the point where we were in danger of physical collapse, and only long enough for our legs to regain a modicum of integrity before we trudged ever onward. To get to that damn museum, I had to walk from my dorm to the reception desk to meet the group, walk back PAST MY OWN DORM on the way downtown, go under a train station, go down a hill, go through a maze of back alleys, escape from the island of the witch Circe, get on a bus, go through ANOTHER maze of back alleys, then go down ANOTHER hill. Yeah...

Still, the museum was super-cool. We talked a little bit in a classroom with one of the curators, and then he took us on a tour. Highlights include a mask covered in real human hair, which was harvested from the beards of men who did not cut them for a year in mourning, and a set of carved wooden bludgeons that were meant to both display the bearer's wealth and split open human skulls (Madison Avenue, I await your response).

For my money, though, the best thing there was a giant ceremonial pole carved with human figures, from Papua New Guinea. This wasn't some wussy pole meant to bring rain or cause fertility or whatnot. No, this pole was there to remind you which of your enemies you need to get around to killing and eating.

Its like a twisted grocery list...that could kill you if it fell on you...MADE BY CANNIBALS.

So after that delight, I made the arduous trek home, and made it back just in time to enjoy a hearty meal of The Dining Hall Is Closed, with a side order of despair.

And THEN a bunch of suitors were after my wife!

Today's Moment of Multicultural Goodness:

Today I realized that I can order pizza in Italian, and I can also understand the part of "Psycho Killer" that goes:

Ce que j'ai fait ce soir-là
Ce qu'elle a dit ce soir-là
Réalisant mon espoir
Je me lance vers la gloire... OK

I did a little jig. In my head. No one noticed.

This one's for you, Nate

2008-01-19T04:13:00.000-08:00

Nate, one of my awesome DMs, has demanded it, and so it shall come to pass:

That right there? That's a Swiss Alp.

Now, if THAT Alp could cut things in half with its shadow, we'd be in for some trouble. 'Cause, you know, it's shadow is about a mile long.

Thank God it doesn't have its hat, though.

Unfocused Rambling: Snow!

2008-01-18T16:27:00.000-08:00

Well, when it rains, it pours. Or rather, snows.

On the off chance that you have ever waded ankle-deep in beef stew, imagine it. Then imagine the beef stew was freezing cold, and instead of hearty chunks of beef and carrots there was naught but chunks of ice, and it was slowly killing you.

That was basically the situation here the other day. It actually started the day before, with a day-long thunderstorm. And then that thunderstorm turned into a blizzard as night fell and the temperature dropped. That blizzard continued into the next day's afternoon, when the temperature rose again, and it turned back to thunderstorm.

So yeah, someone up there likes us.

When I wasn't slogging through the unflavored Slushee that was the roads and sidewalks, I was partaking of a few rounds of good-natured downhill plastic lunch tray sledding. I wish I had gotten pictures, although in some ways I'm glad I didn't, because if I had that would mean I would have had to bring my camera, which would subsequently have gotten soaking wet.

I was, however, accosted by the stone-throwing devils of LDV residence (stands for Leonardo da Vinci, and it's where I live, which is something I probably should have already mentioned), who from their perch on the second-floor balcony rained icy death on random passersby.

None escape their imperious gaze!

Naturally, I deflected their attacks with kung-fu ninja skills, but soon I tired of the game and went into the door beneath them. They thought themselves the victors...

But then I was among them, like a tiger falling upon the helpless flock! Blood flowed like a silken carpet! Each in their turn fell to the mighty sword of the Cimmerian!

Oops, got myself mixed up with Conan for a bit there. Never mind.

So anyway, in the end it turned out fine, except for a car accident that caused one of my classes to be canceled. Only now I've made myself really hungry for beef stew.

Photo Dump: Bellinzona Castle

2008-01-16T03:42:00.000-08:00

Hey!

Pictures for you!

My lovely dorm. Note my pile-based organizational system. And my awesome hobo pillow, made of a towel and a semi-inflated beach ball. In a pillowcase. I'm a regular goddamn MacGuyver.

The view out the window is...a wall. An ivy-covered wall, but still a wall.

And here's what I could be seeing out my window. But don't.

Bellinzona Castle. Not the biggest castle I've seen, but it had its charms.

To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall!

The rest of the orientation group. We're at a kebab restaurant, being served by a man who is either thrilled or horrified at the prospect of feeding all of us.

And finally:

Three giant knees. See, kids? Cartilage is powder blue. Science!

And that's it for this (belated) photo session! Yeah...this was actually three days ago. Sorry. But never fear, blogging will commence unabated!

Departure Diary, part 2: Just Plane Amazing

2008-01-14T10:15:00.000-08:00

Holy crap, that was a lot of girls.

Seriously. Imagine you are getting on a chartered flight to Europe with fifteen nubile young coeds. On the off chance that you are a rock star or Hugh Hefner, this is probably rote to you, but to me, even coming from Goucher College (60/40 women to men), I was amazed. They were all really nice and personable, even to me, the hulking, oafish male-creature. Okay, okay, there were a few other guys, but precious few. To give you an idea, I traded my window seat (next to a girl) to a different girl, and I wound up sitting in the middle section with, yep, three other girls.

Now, “chartered flight” probably makes you think of luxury, ample space, and a flight experience refreshingly free of the usual horde of assholes, morons, and unpleasant smells. Not so much. We were on a packed-to-capacity Swiss Air flight, jammed into economy class, and surrounded by the aforementioned assholes, morons, and unpleasant smells. In particular, the latter was provided by (and I say this not with malice, but as a simple statement of fact) the fattest, smelliest Orthodox Jew I have ever seen. Flying from New York, I wasn’t terribly surprised to find a large number of Jews on the plane, and none of them were any trouble except for this guy who, naturally, sat across the aisle from me. I mean, come on, does the Talmud have something against Right Guard, man?

The three girls I sat next to were Brittany, from Texas, Amanda, from Los Angeles, and The Girl Who Sat The Furthest Away From Me and I Never Caught Her Name, from Alpha Centauri. We wiled away the hours chatting about this and that, like the time when Amanda was living in Germany and one of her housemates broke the toilet by flushing a whole ear of corn down it. We tried sleeping, and I personally failed, which always frustrates me. I can fall asleep in the barrel of a moving cement truck, but for some reason I can’t fall asleep on planes. So I sat around reading some of the fifty-five million Chris Millar articles I had queued up on my computer before I brought it on the plane and lost Internet access. I also read some of the books I had brought, and at one point I looked over and realized something. My choice of reading materials consisted of “The History of Hell” and “A Field Guide to Demons.” The girl next to me? Pocket Bible. D'oh!

I also played the in-flight video game system, which was stocked with only the finest in 1987-era technology. I mostly played the trivia game (news flash: I’m a nerd!) and the in-flight video game version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” Unfortunately, the version they had was cruelly stacked against me, as it was apparently based on the British version of the show and all the questions were nonsensical British claptrap. I managed to bluff my way through “What’s the bobbin’s jackstrap on the ruddy bunting, then, ey?” by using a 50/50 Lifeline and guessing “C: Bob’s yer uncle, bally crumpets all about!” However, I lost my shot at £2000, incorrectly identifying what colour knickers the left midfielder for Morton of the second division was wearing when they won the division title in 1897. And yes, it was the third-easiest question. I pulled the hell out.

Then unpleasantness occurred. I could tell you about what happened when I accidentally left my boarding pass and passport behind on the plane when I got off in Zurich, but, to borrow a phrase, that story would be very sad and not at all interesting. Suffice it to say everything worked out fine, although the stress has probably shortened my lifespan by several years.

However, that unpleasantness was quickly replaced with a flight in a two-prop plane over the Swiss Alps. I had never flown on a small plane like that, especially not over the most beautiful snow-covered mountains I had ever seen. I really wish I had taken pictures, but sadly my camera was buried in the checked baggage.

But fear not! That camera has been exhumed from the bowels of my luggage, and it’s been a-blazin’ all over the beautiful Swiss countryside! Next: Photo-Dump!

Departure Diary, part 1: 1,680 New York Minutes

2008-01-11T13:27:00.000-08:00

So, here I am.

Yes, to make a long story short, I'm really here in Switzerland. Yes, the view is lovely, yes, the campus is cool, yes, I've met lots of new people. That will have to wait, while I tell the aforementioned long story against better judgment.

My journey began with a 4-hour car ride from my home in Maryland to a hotel in Manhattan. My flight left from JFK International Airport the next day, and my family and I drove up and stayed overnight. The drive there was uneventful, i.e., I was passed out in the car. Waking up at, gasp, 9:00 AM really took it out of me, and fortunately my parents were pulling chauffeur duty. When I woke up we were parked outside the Guggenheim art museum, which, as you might imagine, was rather disorienting. “We’re where? Why? How? What time and date is it?”

The Guggenheim was cool, although at the time it was showcasing a certain artist and the whole experience was rather single-minded. The artist, Robert Prince (that’s right, the artist known as Prince), was famous for writing dirty jokes on giant, monochromatic canvasses, and, I suppose, for getting them put in art galleries. It was interesting the first time, but after the sixth twenty-foot-tall “There once was a man from Nantucket” it began to wear. Personally I derived more enjoyment from the annotations, which would always say things like “Early in Prince’s career he was influenced by new-wave photographers such as blah blah blah,” and imagining an art gallery full of the works of the, er, other Artist with the same moniker.

After the Guggenheim we took the subway to the Carnegie Deli, where we got truly monstrous quantities of meat. Seriously, I estimate they took a good 35% of a cow and put it between two slices of whole grain, and served it to my 15-year-old brother. I personally got a hamburger that looked like it was traced with a full-size Frisbee. We followed this up with a wad of strawberry cheesecake that would probably put a diabetic into a coma from fifteen paces, and then we all promptly died.

Dr. Hibbert: Looks like beef poisoning!

Diners: *GASP!*

Dr. Hibbert: ...Probably from some other restaurant.

Diners: Aaah. *go back to eating*

Hotels in New York are crammed in wherever they can possibly fit, and ours was wedged between a pizzeria and a, quote, “Hair Traders.” Although suspicious that I would wake up the next morning bald, we checked in and made our way to our bizarrely-shaped room. Because of the cramped area they had to warp and twist the room in such a way that I’m not sure it followed conventional laws of spatial geometry. Unfortunately, the inflatable mattress that I had taken to sleep on happened to be a regular rectangle and was at odds with the non-Euclidian R'yleh of a hotel room, and so it was kind of difficult to find space for it. Naturally I got stepped on repeatedly even with the best placement possible. Plus, like all inflatable mattresses, it deflated during the night, leaving me to wake up in the rather unenviable position of being denied sensation to the left half of my body. Hey, they did say it was “inflatable,” not, “will inflate and stay that way.”

Before I was due to leave at the airport we visited the Museum of Modern Art. Looking for parking, we spotted an empty section of curb across from the building and a meter. After paying, though, we noticed that there were some vaguely-worded signs indicating that the spot was for “commercial vehicles.” Looking at the other cars parked there (perfectly ordinary vans and sedans), we didn’t notice any indication that this was true, so we decided to chance it and park there anyway. We went in and had a lovely time for about an hour and a half.

Then, we were hitting up the gift shop which just happened to have a large glass window that looked out at the curb where we parked. I was browsing various artistic doodads when I heard my mom yelling, “Hey! They’re towing our car!” Her tone was not overly surprised, nor very urgent, simply an announcement of her intention and its cause. I freaked out and looked around for my dad but I couldn’t see him. I ran for the door and caught a glimpse of him, looking confused, as I left.

Across the street the tow truck was blinking its lights as my mom was scrambling to escape its clutches. As I got outside she was already backing up and pulling away from the curb. She crossed the street and pulled up alongside us, and we ran after the moving car, opened the door and jumped in like action heroes, and sped off before any more disasters could befall us.

I like to imagine the tow-truck driver describing that day’s adventure: “Aye, she was a beaut’, that big red ’03 Honda Odyssey. Catch o’ the day, big as yer livin’ room. But she slipped right off me hook. Arr.”

Then, to make a long and emotional three hours short, I arrived at JFK International, said goodbye to my family, checked my luggage, and got on a plane. The rest...to come!

Addendum: Ha ha ha, the Prince site I linked to had gotten a cease and desist notice from the courts.

Did You Know...?

2008-01-05T22:21:00.001-08:00

Tonight I was talking with my younger brother Steven as he played Super Mario Galaxy. According to him, the following people and things are, quote, "douchebags:" Time travelers, superheroes, anyone who rises from the dead, gas giants, carpets, elves, Zeus, "Magic Eye" puzzles, shoelaces, vests, and paintings by Rothko.

You can see, clearly, why I need to be in constant webcam contact with this individual and his startling intellect.

Unfocused Rambling, chapter the first

2008-01-03T22:25:00.001-08:00

Well, now that I've got THAT out of my system...

But seriously, though, I'd just downloaded Portal last night, and, naturally, had finished it before dinner. But what it lacks in length, it makes up for in brevity. Also awesome, awesome gameplay. And an excellent Half-Life 2-ian story. It is mysterious, chilling, and darkly hilarious.

Between Portal ("The cake is a lie") and Psychonauts ("Take that, genetic memory of Napoleon!"), which I also recently downloaded on our glacier-slow Steam connection, I believe I have found the motherlode of sheer quotable awesomeness.

I am, naturally, a little late to the Psychonauts train, which departed for Sleeper-Hit Station in 2005. However, I can tell you with confidence that it is perhaps the most enjoyable 20 bucks you will ever spend in gaming. It, like Portal, is not terribly long, but it is consistently hilarious and enjoyable on many levels. Part of the fun is looking at a situation you're in and realizing that no other game could possibly feature such circumstances. For instance, when you're doing acrobatics in a circus made out of raw meat, which is a mental landscape you've entered, produced by the co-mingling of your own brain and the brain of an insane military general, which occurred because you sneezed your own brain out of your head and then used psychic powers to throw it into the cockpit of a brain-powered tank. It is every bit as awesome as it sounds.

So, I hope you leave this post with two impressions: First, Portal and Psychonauts are things of purest beauty. Secondly, this blog will ramble. I will talk about all sorts of things that I like and that, by extension, you should like as well, and not necessarily about my trip to Europe. Because, honestly, that will get boring, and plus I haven't even left yet. So let it be known that if you don't want to hear about my DnD characters, cool video games, or other pointless junk, I advise you to read a different blog.

However, that different blog will likely be as unfocused and self-obsessed as this one, but with far worse grammar, so maybe you're better off just staying here. Perhaps it is best if we die.

Goodbye, Old Friend

2008-01-03T13:55:00.002-08:00

We interrupt this blog to give you this important message.

IN MEMORIAM
Weighted Companion Cube 2007-2007
In Pace Requisat

That is all.

Farewell 07, Hello Excess

2007-12-31T12:53:00.000-08:00

If you could only take 100 pounds of stuff with you to the Moon, what would you take?

Oh, wait, sorry. Hold on. I gotta do the introduction schtick.

I'm David Heckman, sophomore at Goucher College, from Columbia, Maryland, and I'm going to study abroad in Lugano, Switzerland, at Franklin College. Bam. I will attempt to seed the rest of this post with various other interesting tidbits, in a process that will be in no way forced or awkward, at least until I get bored.

Now, perhaps, you can begin to understand the title of my blog. I'm going to attempt to (mis)use this public space to chronicle the life-changing study-abroad experience and document the emotional and intellectual changes that I will no doubt undergo, thus becoming a fuller and more balanced individual through synergy, leverage, proactive business management, blah blah blah, and a healthy dose of xenophobia. (Just kidding! Probably.) This is sort of going to be like a diary, except that instead of it being a private source of healing catharsis, I will instead scream out into the endless black void that is the Internet, hoping that someone, anyone, will listen and perhaps derive amusement from my misguided, desperate attempts at self-aggrandizement. (Self-aggrandizements such as the fact that I was once mentioned in The New Yorker at the tender age of four, for my pithy and insightful comment that the best part of my trip to New York was the hotel room.)

To segue inelegantly, let's return to my original, jarring, downright aggressive demand/question that I hit you with at the top of this, my first post. If you were going to the Moon and you could only bring 100 pounds of stuff with you, what would you bring? The natural response is to say something logical, like food, games, shelter, 100 pounds of porn, or a butane stove. Of course, I hadn't specified where on the Moon you were going, and whether or not it was some kind of Moon-based colony, meaning that unless you said "A space-suit and compressed air," you would be doomed to a horrifying death by asphyxia. Of course, if you actually brought a space-suit, then you would be left with no room for food or water. So you would inevitably wish that you had chosen the sweet relief of boiling blood and exploding eyeballs instead of the agony of starvation. (Speaking of horrible agony, I enjoy many geeky activities such as Dungeons and Dragons, Magic the Gathering, and, uh, blogging.)

You know, I have a tendency to go on and on about irrelevant things. What was my point?

Oh, right! Metaphor! You see, dear reader, the above question was actually a clever cipher for the dilemma that faces me now. My flight to Switzerland leaves January 9th. I have until then to get everything I could conceivably need in the next four months. And it has to fit into two suitcases. And they can't weigh a total of more than 100 pounds. Now, perhaps, you see the analogy, although the Moon is considerably different in characteristics to Lugano, Switzerland, most notably in the number of Swiss people, amount of air, and general level of je-ne-sais-quoi. (I took four semesters of French in high school, and one in college so far.)

So I've been puzzling out what to take and in what quantities, kind of like Tetris, except each Tetris block has a numerical value as well and the blocks that make up each row can't have their numerical values add up to a certain number or higher or the line won't be cleared and I have to clear a certain number of lines in a short period of time and my mother is nagging me constantly. So, really, not much like Tetris at all, but whatever.

The decisions have been agonizing. Give up my electric razor in favor of a lighter disposable? Take only my favorite bowling ball, and leave the rest at home? Consider taking a toothbrush that isn't made of depleted uranium? Perhaps I could take a TV and just one pair of pants. If I skip out on condoms, I could take my favorite DnD miniature. Hey, those two things dovetail nicely; what person who brings a DnD miniature to study abroad could possibly need a condom? (My favorite is the one I custom-made for my character Yotohiro Mise, the hobgoblin samurai. I play DnD with a group of home-schoolers that I know by way of my younger brother, Steven, who is 15, who home-schools, and my favorite color is purple.)

Luggage concerns aside, I have some great things planned. And I'll keep you (Yes, you!) informed about them ad nauseum. Yes, I plan to become a self-absorbed, self-obsessed blogger concerned only with what I am going through right now. (I took that line from Mystery Science Theater 3000, a show I like. Other shows I like are Mythbusters and the Daily Show/Colbert Report duo.)

Yes, soon, I, Dave, will be in Europe, and will become insufferable. And this is a blog. The titular implications, gentlemen, are obvious.

(I wear a variety of hats.)